Visual.ly gets two million dollars to grow – what about the name?

ONE OF THE MOST impressive start-ups in the visual business is the clever.ly named company visual.ly – and after a succesful launch they’re now getting more attention from investors. Result: Two million dollars to bring in even more people to the company which already employs ten people fulltime.

So the future is looking bright – the only concern perhaps the name of the company. Did you know that the .ly domainnames are from Libya – and there has reported.ly been problems renewing these because of the current war there?

Also a website (vb.ly) got deleted because it didn’t adhere to sharia laws … Or maybe it’s just because the local Libyans want the good domains (shorter than 4 characters) for themselves and the friends of Colonel Qaddaffi? It has been reported that NIC.ly who handles the Libyan registrations started this policy last year. I guess it looks a bit safer now with Qaddaffi losing his power in Libya? Still – it’s a weird thing when internet and real world suddenly collides and the decision of going for a .ly domain rather than the established .com has an impact on your business.

Visual.ly has registered in advance for the next 6 years, so they should be safe, but maybe they need to tone down their promise to deliver sexy visualizations? And what might happen if a user-submitted infographic crosses the line? Having some religious committee to decide whether or not your website is acceptable is just a scary thought. Maybe time to secure the visually.com or go with the more safe choice of country-code from Iceland and get visually.is (the last one is actually vacant)

The promo-video is really good too – although the ‘then’ and ‘now’ barchart maybe goes a bit close to the edge of their own ethical behavior as is stated here